


dunamis

by mimesere



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Light Dom/sub, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Other, Trans Male Character, and it's all pretty ridiculous, i mean there's a lot of edging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:27:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28313055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimesere/pseuds/mimesere
Summary: Barnes was definitely charming the clothes off Cel, but mostly he was doing it by being adorable instead of whatever it was he was suggesting with the hat and the clothes.
Relationships: Commander James Barnes/Celiquillithon "Cel" Sidebottom
Comments: 20
Kudos: 24





	dunamis

The thing about Barnes was that Cel thought he was going to be one way because of how he dressed and then they thought he was going to be a different way because of how he talked and then it turned out he was a different way entirely that was somehow the sum of both of those things. And there was something really adorable about the way he’d stutter forward then back, sliding his hands under Cel’s shirt and up their back before he’d catch himself and retreat until Cel said, “Yes, more of that,” or the way he’d tilt his head back, surprisingly pliant, when Cel would get their fingers tangled in his hair and pull.

It wasn’t that Cel was unfamiliar with that kind of thing -- they were old enough and curious enough to have tried a lot of things with a lot of people in a lot of configurations -- but Barnes kept being caught out by it, eyes going a little wider than normal whenever Cel pushed him down and climbed on top,lacing their fingers together and pinning his hands in place or the way he’d flush all the way down his neck and chest every time Cel complimented him like he didn’t know he was ridiculously attractive or that Cel spent, oh, probably way too much time thinking about all the ways to enjoy someone with that much grace and discipline. 

Sometimes they’d tell him that. Just lean over and whisper it in his ear and watch him slouch down in his chair and take a large drink, red along his cheeks and the tips of his ears while he looked away and Carter snickered.

It was _fun_ in a way Cel hadn’t expected when they’d started flirting. They’d thought he’d be much smoother and they’d be lying if they said they hadn’t been looking forward a little to being swept off their feet like a character in one of Zolf’s books. Maybe a little dip and a passionate kiss with some explosions -- little ones, so they weren’t distracting, just enough to add a little sizzle and maybe some atmospheric smoke -- that Cel could rig up ahead of time for the full experience and trigger at the right time. They’d sketched a few possibilities on a device for it, maybe something that incorporated some kind of sympathetic magic to make it less prone to go off while Cel was fiddling with it. 

The point was, Cel had gone into this expecting some level of charm and they were getting buckets of it, but less in a dashing way where Barnes pushed them up against a bulkhead in some secluded alcove of the Vengeance with -- all right, he had done that and it had been fantastic, Cel hadn’t even remembered that alcove was there. It was close and just dark enough that Cel couldn’t see him clearly but they recognized the solid feel of him under their hands, and there had been a lot of kissing and okay, yes, Cel would confess to some biting because sometimes things stuck with you once you’d been in a different form. Barnes had asked, “Can I--” and Cel hadn’t really even cared what they were agreeing to when they said, “Yes, great, terrific idea,” and then Barnes had gone to his knees right there. And if they hadn’t been swept off their feet exactly, it had been pretty close by the end.

 _The point was_ , Barnes was definitely charming the clothes off Cel, but mostly he was doing it by being adorable instead of whatever it was he was suggesting with the hat and the clothes.

That was fine. That was a variable that Cel could work with. All of it was variables Cel could work with as long as they learned how everything fit together.

And learning that took experimentation.

“You want to do what exactly?” asked Barnes.

“I want to establish a baseline,” said Cel. They waved Barnes into one of the rooms they were re-building into the Vengeance. The bunkhouse was nice but that many people around all the time was a lot and sometimes it was nice to sleep somewhere quiet, surrounded by the creak of timber and the relative safety of something Cel had built with their own hands.

Barnes took in the room. There wasn’t much to it; either of them could have stretched out and just about touched each wall but there was room enough for a narrow bed and somewhere to sit. Earhart had agreed to back off a little on the munitions to give them all a bit of privacy and Cel had done what they could.

“A baseline of what?”

“Of what you like,” Cel said promptly. They held up a small notebook and a pencil, catching the way Barnes’ eyebrows lifted at them. And, just in case they weren’t being clear enough about where they intended all of this to go, they winked. 

Barnes found something fascinating on the low ceiling and Cel tracked the progress of his blush down the open vee of his shirt. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “All right then. What do you want me to do?”

Cel flipped open the notebook and sat down. “Let’s start with the clothes.”

One of the interesting things Cel had learned and later corroborated with Carter (who’d laughed himself into tears) and Zolf (who’d finally surfaced from his own private happiness into a warmth that made Cel wish he could just take Wilde and run before anything could draw him down again) was that Barnes didn’t actually have a sense of modesty. Whatever was sending him into fits, it wasn’t the nudity or the sex or the lack of privacy. 

And, true to previous observation, Barnes was efficient and neat and strangely thoughtless about taking off his clothing. Halfway through, in the middle of folding his shirt, he looked at Cel and asked, “Did you...er. Did you want a show?” He glanced at the shirt in his hands and grimaced before putting it down. 

“I wouldn’t say no,” they said. “But only if you like it.”

“If I like it,” he echoed. He opened his mouth, then shut it again, looking thoughtful. 

Cel smiled encouragingly at him. “That is what we’re here to establish. Make it a performance if you want to. Or pretend I’m not here! What would you do if you were alone?”

“Go to sleep,” he said, dry as anything. 

“You’re alone, you have time, you have some privacy…” Cel gestured in a circle with the pencil. 

“I have an audience,” he said. There was a glint in his eyes that Cel liked a lot. They also liked the way his mouth set when he was trying not to smile. 

Cel wrote: being watched?. When they glanced up, Barnes was looking at them, sharp and focused. “Does that matter?” they asked. 

This was one of the open questions. Cel had their theories -- that he liked attention, that he didn’t but used the tools at hand, that he liked it and was embarrassed by himself for liking it, that he didn’t care one way or the other -- and plans for everything they could think of and a few potential improvisations depending on his answers. 

“You look and I know you’re looking and that’s…” Barnes let out a breath. “You change yourself, yeah? When someone’s watching.” He finished taking off his clothes. There was no art to it, nothing like a tease; even so, there was so much that was beautiful in the play of muscle and the economy of motion and the unthinking way he made sure everything was tidy before setting it aside. Another time, Cel would have tried to capture the way he moved in a rough sketch. 

He sat down on the bed, smoothing his hands over the rumpled blankets. 

Cel could have reached out to touch him. They didn’t, but the potential was there, hanging in the space between them and Cel followed the idea the tiniest bit: set aside the notebook, slide their hands up the long muscled stretch of Barnes’ thighs, and possibilities branched and branched into a hundred things Cel knew with all the certainty in them that Barnes would enjoy, that the two of them together would have so much fun with. They could push him down onto the bed or go to their knees or tell him how to touch himself or tell him how to touch them. They could tangle themself up in him and indulge in all that bare skin. They could pose him and know he’d stay like they wanted while they drew up a real portrait, something to keep against the future. 

“All right, Cel?” he asked and all those scattered could-bes collapsed down into the present moment where Barnes was sitting on their bed, watching them back. The smile he’d tried hiding earlier was getting away from him a little but mostly he just looked as calm and steady as he ever did. 

“Yes, great. I’m so great right now.” Barnes smiled at them then, a there-and-gone flash of it, and on impulse, Cel added, “You look good.”

He did look good in their bed. Like he belonged in Cel’s space. 

“Right, well,” said Barnes, looking away again. His hands were still relaxed on the bed and there was something in the curve of his mouth that made Cel think he didn’t mind so much. 

It felt...nice. Everything about the two of them felt like a nice, warm thing in a world that didn’t usually have time for all that.

“So, uh, right. Yes. What do you like to do when you’re--” They’d had a whole script for this. Imagine you’re alone, they’d said except now they couldn’t pretend that Barnes wasn’t alone because Barnes wasn’t going to pretend that. He’d tangled them up in the whole thing before he’d laid hands on himself and if Cel weren’t so charmed by it, they’d be the tiniest bit annoyed at the neat way Barnes had thrown everything off track. 

Barnes smirked at them and, like everything else, it looked unfairly good on him. Some of that was just that Cel already wanted him and was caught up in the rush of new! and exciting! and being wanted back!, all the giddiness of having someone new to learn and the fizzy anticipation of someone wanting to learn them back crashing over them like the best kind of wave. Some of it was just Barnes. 

“Dunno. Never tried this before with anyone watching.” he said when they trailed off. He leaned back on one hand and ran the other down his chest and to his stomach, past a variety of scars and a coiling snake tattooed over one shoulder and down around his ribs. His skin pebbled in the chilly air behind the slow sweep of his hand and Cel wanted to lay their hand there, to follow the path of his and feel the change in texture from scars to skin and--

“Are you cold?” they asked. “I can find something to maybe make it--this room will be warmer when we’re back in the air and the elementals are working again but I can find something? Do you want a blanket? Or or is that--I don’t think you’re trying to seem aggressive but maybe it’s an unconscious thing? Like a cat when they poof up, that’s the same physical response to um. Stimulation.”

Barnes knocked his foot against Cel’s ankle and left it there, a single point of contact that amplified the urge to reach out and touch. “I’m all right.” There was something familiar and warm about the touch to their ankle and in the amused timbre of his voice, a holdover maybe from when he’d forgotten to hold himself close after the wild magic and let Sassraa’s body move the way it wanted in response to whatever he was feeling. Cel wasn’t great at reading people but they’d tried hard to understand all the kobolds and that had carried over a little to the hours and hours spent talking to Barnes.

Cel took a deep breath. “Tell me if you’re not,” they said and Barnes nodded, hand moving again carefully, lightly, lingering over the scar from the airship crash, round and ragged and new in a field of faded old slashes and cuts. The muscles under his hand tensed and he twisted a little, stretching his side and pressing in hard with his fingers like he was testing it somehow. 

A few inches over or up and he’d have died like the others. Cel tried to imagine him with the shock of white hair like Carter and Wilde and couldn’t. They tried to imagine where he might have been found and who’d have gone after him to ask him to come back and couldn’t do that either. Barnes was a very present kind of person, real and grounded and in the moment in a way that made it hard to imagine him someplace or somehow else. 

They covered his hand with theirs, not even really thinking about it, and he made a questioning noise before slipping his hand out so they could touch his body there, warm and resilient and solid under their fingers. “I’ve just got to work it out. It might not make any real difference but I haven’t had a chance to try.” He turned enough for Cel to see his back, where the matching scar was. “Azu healed it up well good, but it’s better to learn any new limits early in case I need to compensate for it.”

Cel blinked at him. “What?”

“In a fight?” he said. “I don’t know how or if something this deep will change how I can move. Never had a wound go through and through like that. It’s usually all surface.” He gestured at the rest of the scars on his chest and arms. 

It occurred to Cel in that moment that Barnes’ relationship with his body was, in its own way, as complete as Cel’s with theirs. Cel knew themselves backwards and forwards, all the pieces that made them _them_ ; they had to know their base materials before they could go around changing it. That careful calibration was one of the reasons the more advanced potions didn’t work right on anyone else. It just hadn’t ever really sunk in that there were other ways to know the same thing, different approaches to that kind of knowledge that might matter as much. 

It went a long way toward explaining why Barnes had been so careful in Sassraa’s body. 

Barnes took Cel’s hand and lifted it to his lips, pressing a kiss to their palm. He looked sheepish as he set their hand back on their own leg. “I didn’t mean to go on,” he said. “It’s just new.”

Cel cleared their throat and resettled themselves on the seat across from Barnes. “Does it--how does it feel?”

“Sensitive,” he said, leaning back again. Cel wondered how much he was aware of what he looked like, if the long lines of thigh and belly and chest were a choice he was making for Cel’s enjoyment. He pressed his fingers there again, hard, and exhaled sharply. He shifted on the bed, tensing like he was trying to stay still but couldn’t entirely and Cel wrote that down. 

“Does it hurt?” 

“A bit.” He hadn’t moved his hand away. 

“Do you like it?” Cel asked, pencil poised. They knew better than a lot of people how tangled up signals could get in a body. Did magical healing have an effect? They’d never really made any kind of study on the long term effects of healing, divine or otherwise. Cel made a note to follow up on that later anyway. Maybe Azu would know more about it. Or Zolf.

Barnes laughed soundlessly and licked his lips, eyes on the ceiling as he moved his hand down the top of his thigh, the muscle there taut under his fingers. “A bit.”

Cel shifted where they were sitting, want curling warm and restless low in their body. “Did you know you liked that?”

Barnes drew his fingers up the inside of his thigh and pressed his palm against his cock with the same steady pressure he’d used everywhere else. There was the tiniest of hitches in his breath before he glanced sidelong at Cel. “You have a funny idea about how much time I’ve spent doing all this,” he said, voice going around the edges. His hips rocked up and the tips of his fingers slipped between his folds where Cel could see him glistening and wet.

“Not a lot of time for debauching yourself on a ship?” they asked. They tried to picture a younger, less finished Barnes -- softer in the face, maybe, slighter, less stern around the mouth -- and couldn’t bring the idea into focus at all, especially not when the Barnes in front of them rubbed careful circles around his cock. “Or no privacy?”

It took him long enough to answer that Cel thought maybe he wasn’t going to and they wondered where they’d taken the wrong turn in the conversation, except he hadn’t stopped touching himself and he hadn’t stopped looking at them. 

“No time,” he said. He pushed up against his fingers and Cel let themselves appreciate the mechanics of it all, the tensing of his thighs and abdomen, the line of his shoulder down to his forearms, a feast of engineering in muscle and tendon and bone all spread out for Cel’s enjoyment. “There’s always something else to do on a ship. Most of it’s boring. Training. Paperwork. Impressing people. Cel--”

Barnes cut himself off and stopped moving, holding his breath for a long, long second. Cel couldn’t help making a small noise at the shaky breath he let out when he took his hand away, settling it next to him on the bed. Cel found themselves matching breaths with him as he got himself back under control and it ratcheted something tight and hot in them when he murmured, “Right then” to himself and started again.

And again. And again.

It wasn’t just that it took less and less time for him to find his tipping point and back away from it, or that it took longer and longer for him to grasp the edges of his increasingly ragged control and drag it over himself until he could answer their questions without gasping. It wasn’t even the way he dug his fingers hard enough into the top of his leg that Cel was certain he’d give himself bruises and Cel thought, oh no, that’s the wrong tactic for you, sweetheart, but they didn’t say anything because it was _spectacularly_ the wrong tactic for him and they weren’t disappointed at all by the way he shuddered and made a noise that sounded almost like a laugh or the way he tried it again later with all the relevant context. 

All of that was amazing, definitely the whole situation was one of Cel’s better ideas and it wasn’t even going according to plan, but the best part was the way Barnes was looking at them. He wasn’t even trying to hide the smile anymore and there was a brightness in his face that made Cel want to find out everything they could do that would make him look like that again and again. He looked like Cel felt when they were in their workshop and everything was going exactly the way they wanted. 

Cel leaned forward and lowered their voice. “Barnes, are you trying to impress me?”

“A little,” he said, breathless. “Is it working?”

They looked him over, sweat damp hair curling at his temples and the shivers that worked their way down his body. His fingers clenched in the blanket on the bed and sympathy had Cel curling their own fingers around the edge of the sacking they’d made into a cushion for the storage bench they’d whacked together and wondered briefly where the pencil had gone before deciding they didn’t care at all, not when Barnes was so carefully not touching himself and Cel wasn’t touching him or themself either and everything was tangled up in waiting, in the potential energy, that same twist of anticipation that they felt just before they turned on something they’d built and didn’t know what was going to happen. 

Cel had expected him to be fun, and he was, but he was turning out to be fun in ways that Cel hadn’t even thought were on the table. 

“Oh, yes.” They put down the notebook. It wasn’t any good without something to write with and Barnes was well past the point where it was useful as a goad. There were rough sketches of everything Cel couldn’t put into words and whole lists of observations and ideas to try as long as they had the time. They’d even made a note to look into some kind of sound proofing, because Barnes wasn’t loud at all and Cel had decided to take that as a personal challenge. They didn’t think the kobolds would mind, but Barnes might. They’d ask him first.

They stood up and nudged his knees apart with their own, stepping into the space he made for them. Cel wanted to try everything on him, to use every single data point he’d given them and apply them practically to take him apart as well or better than he was doing to himself. Cel pushed his hair back off his face and he turned into their hand, rubbing his cheek against their fingers. He was very warm in the very cool room.

“Was that what you wanted?” he asked. They combed through his hair with their fingers and he closed his eyes. Fine tremors were still working their way across his shoulders and he hadn’t let go of the blanket.

“The point was to find out what you liked,” they said.

He sighed and let his head fall forward to rest against Cel’s stomach. Their fingers tightened in his hair reflexively and the noise he made was excellent and so was the way he tensed against them and said something they couldn’t hear, muffled as it was against their body. They pulled carefully and he tilted his head back, eyes still closed. “I liked you watching. I didn’t want you to stop that.” Dreamily, he added, “You talk to yourself when you’re focused on something.”

“What did I say?” Nothing too embarrassing they hoped.

He shrugged. “Dunno. I was distracted by then but I liked it. You talking. It’s nice.”

Cel considered their options and picked one, climbing onto the bed and straddling his thighs. They drew their fingers over his shoulder and down his arm, along the long faded scars from old cuts and to his fingers, holding tight enough on to the folds of the blanket to turn his knuckles white. He surrendered his hand to them when they laced their fingers with his.

“Look at me,” they told him, and he did. They took his hand and brought it to his chest and down, following most of that first path he’d tried, until their joined hands were between his legs again, palms pressed against his cock and fingers where he’d been wet and slick for ages. “Again. Until I tell you to stop.”

The angle wasn’t great and Cel kept him from moving his hand to get a better one. He could have forced the issue -- Cel was strong, but they weren’t sword fighting strong -- but he just ground up against their combined hands, chasing the promise of enough pressure or friction or both, hurtling forward without any apparent care for what he had to know was going to happen. 

Cel wasn’t mean. They just wanted to feel everything up close. It didn’t take long at all before Cel leaned down and pressed their mouth against his temple. “Stop,” they said into his ear and when he tried to pull his hand away, they held him there and he let them, shaking. 

“Cel,” he said and sounded desperate like he hadn’t the whole rest of the time. “Please--”

Everything about the angles on their positions were terrible, but Cel inched forward anyway until they felt their hands brushing up against where Cel’s been hard and aching since Barnes’ second go at teasing himself.

“Again,” they tell him and he let out a long, shaking breath before moving again. He wrapped his free arm around their waist, giving him some leverage to move against and balancing them in the frankly stupid position they’d taken up. Every move he made pushed their hands against Cel, who wasn’t nearly as far gone as Barnes and they both knew it.

“I can suck you,” he offered and somehow the blush was making it through the hectic color from all the fucking; it was ridiculous and endearing how much his complete shamelessness in action failed him utterly when it came to talking. “Please. Please, Cel--”

It was the begging that worked for Cel, taking all the built up potentiality and making it actual. And in that moment of cold, tingling tension at the top of their arc just before they fell, Cel said, “yes, now,” and felt Barnes come apart beneath them before they were gone too.

They held on through it all, pulling Barnes in close and clumsily stroking his hair once they’d sorted themselves out. And when Barnes was in no fit state to navigate anything so complicated as moving, Cel arranged them more comfortably on the bed, half draped over Barnes’ side and stroking the length of his arm and along his flank, everywhere they could reach without moving too much themselves.

Barnes stirred and then started to laugh and Cel poked him in the side. “That’s me done then,” he said. “I hope your plans for tonight involved staying here.”

“I told Carter not to expect you back tonight,” they said.

Barnes made an agreeable sound. “He’ll be insufferable.”

“Sorry,” Cel said. They weren’t really and didn’t bother trying to sound sincere about it. It had been worth sitting through Carter’s inevitable attempts to embarrass Barnes and everyone else’s knowing smugness.

“I’ll just be more insufferable,” Barnes said. “I’m better at it than he is.”

That was an idea. Cel didn’t know if they could out-smug Wilde but they could give it a try.

**Author's Note:**

> three things:  
> 1) I spent a lot of time looking at pictures of olympic fencers during the writing of this fic and I promise you, Barnes has fantastic thighs.   
> 2) Metric is a hell of a great Cel soundtrack.  
> 3) if you would like me to tag anything else, please let me know.
> 
> i guess this is where i say you can find me at sidewaystime.tumblr.com.


End file.
